This is probably a very simple thing but I can’t find an answer, possibly because I don’t know what terms to use in search.
How do I use an alias of a path with mv or cp? Or even cd?
In /etc/bash.bashrc I have:
alias docs=‘/media/docs
cd docs
Gives “No such file or directory”
Yet:
docs
Gives “Is directory”
With alias docs=‘cd /media/docs’ and by typing docs I get into the directory. Obviously I can’t use that alias with mv or cp though.
Maybe this isn’t even an intended use of alias but still. Why doesn’t it work?


It might be excessive for your purposes but an alternative may be to use zoxide. It learns the directories you use regularly and you can then cd to those directories through the
zcommand. E.g.z docs.